Practice Makes Perfect
by Findegil
Summary: Kagura makes a suggestive proposition to Okita, with not-so-pure motives at stake. Fluff, UST, and limes galore, as the sadistic pair seem to do nothing else.
1. Chapter 1

"So...you're propositioning me for...what exactly?"

"Sex practice."

Okita snorted his orange soda out of his nose. Kagura wiped traces of it off her face, as the couple started at them from the next booth. Kagura and Okita acted like it was nothing unusual, and they were actually not far off in that regard. Their relationship was so dysfunctional it would scare the most jaded psychiatrist into retirement. That, and they weren't even dating. Not even close. They were a step away from moral enemies. On a good day.

"Why me... of all the people on Earth?" Okita asked between coughs.

"Well, I tried to get just someone off the street..."

"...and they ran away screaming..." Okita thought, sizing up the girl sitting across from him.

"...but for some reason that didn't work out so I thought of maybe one of Otae's coworkers..."

"...bet that didn't go over well..." Okita thought again.

"...they said they wouldn't because I'm already corrupted enough, whatever that means..."

"I can guess, living with Danna..." Okita thought a third time, letting Kagura ramble on a bit more. "Why doesn't she just use the porn I know he has?"

Kagura shifted, uneasy in her seat. Okita realized she was waiting for some remark from him. He racked his brain, but came up empty.

"Why don't you just use Danna's porn?" He decided to just go with his last thought. To hell with it. The conversation was already beyond weird.

"I would, but he's hidden it really well since Shinpachi found it and fainted. We couldn't get him to wake up for a full ten minutes and when he did all he could mumble was 'boobs' for the next two days."

"There's nothing I can say to that," Okita thought, trying not to smirk, his sadistic side doubled up in laughter.

"I would just hire someone to practice with..." Okita's eyes widened a bit in surprise. What did this girl have for brains? That nasty green stuff she was always chewing?

"...but I already had to con money from Gin-chan for Sadaharu...and...well...I don't want Gin-chan to know about this."

Okita said nothing, so Kagura had no choice but to continue.

"I know guys pay for it all the time. Gin-chan goes to Otae's club a lot after all. Even that guy you're always with has gone…"

"Does she mean Hijikata?" Okita thought. "Good god I hope not."

"He's never gone there just for fun…" Okita said, wondering if it would get through to her.

"So I thought you wouldn't mind getting some of it for free. You're a guy after all."

Nothing he said was making it through to this alien girl. Okita decided this might be interesting, if only for blackmail material for later. There was no way she wouldn't get angry and storm off after what he was going to do.

"I'll say yes, if you can answer my questions."

"O-Ok."

"Why can't your precious Gin-chan know about this sudden burst of puberty?"

Kagura glared at him. This could make plants wither and babies cry, but Okita was one of the rare few who didn't respond in any way to it. That annoyed Kagura to no end, and she nearly decided to storm off when she thought of the trouble it took to sneak out of the Yorozuya, go to the Shinsengumi Headquarters, and threaten Yamazaki with disembowelment with her umbrella to give Okita a message to meet her here. She didn't even expect him to show up when she scrawled "Information on Joui. Meet me at Saizeria now" on a piece of paper Yamazaki warily took from her. Then there were the nervous minutes while she waited for him, and endured the stares of the waiter and that annoying couple in the next booth. She had no choice.

"I'm...going to use it on him..." Kagura mumbled, nearly incoherent.

If Okita was drinking, which he had wisely stopped doing, more would have come rushing out of his nose. As it was, he somehow managed to keep a straight face. There was also another feeling building underneath his incredulous facade which he didn't want to analyze in any way, shape, or form. He shoved it down and tried to strangle it. That was what it deserved.

"Any other questions?" Kagura growled after a few seconds passed.

"Nope." That one question and answer had sent any others out of his mind.

It was now Kagura's turn to stare. The silence stretched out between them. Kagura lowered her eyes first, poking at a small pool of orange nose rain on the table.

Okita abruptly stood up and moved toward the door. He called back to her in his trademark deadpan voice, eyes dancing in a way that disturbed Kagura,

"Let's go have some fun, China."


	2. Chapter 2

Kagura followed Okita at some distance, wondering what kind of sadistic urge had possessed him to say yes to her. His face and voice throughout their interview had been his usual deadpan, tinged at points with disdain. It was obvious he despised her, even more now than he did normally. Kagura didn't blame him.

If she was honest, she despised herself too—for being unable to show her feelings for Gin-chan in any other way than violence, for having no one but a near mortal enemy to help her, for being so completely…alien. Human girls did not seem to have these problems. Or at least if they did, they hid them well.

Kagura gazed at Okita's back, the earphones of his stupid sword pod thing swaying as he walked, and realized which district he was leading her. It was not where nice innocent girls went alone, or with a friend, or even a boyfriend, but Kagura was not a nice innocent girl. She wasn't even a girl, not really. She was an Amanto, a warrior who conquered whatever she came up against. If that foe happened to be the art of seduction, then she would inevitably defeat it too. A Yato never lost a fight.

Okita stopped at a love hotel, seemed to pick the gaudiest and pinkest one on the street, waited for her to catch up.

"You looked like a stalker the whole way here," said Okita.

Kagura snorted in disgust. "I don't want to be seen coming here with you."

"By your precious Gin-chan? Like that would happen," Okita replied. "No doubt he's at a Pachinko parlor somewhere, if he's even awake. Do you even care about anyone else?"

"I'm going in," Kagura said, resolutely stone-faced, dodging his questions. Standing on the sidewalk in front of this place with him interrogating her was galling, her pride taking severe blows the last few hours.

She walked into the small hotel lobby, which was even more garish inside than outside. It looked like a kinky Barbie dollhouse on steroids. Okita pushed past her to the counter.

"Room 204," he demanded. "For an hour."

The floosy lady behind the counter, somewhat cowed by his expression, looked over at Kagura.

"No minors," she said.

Okita smiled his maniacal grin. "She's an alien," he answered, as if that took care of everything. "They look younger than they actually are."

The lady still looked uncertain.

"And if you don't give me a key to the damn room right now," Okita leaned in, lowering his voice so that only she could hear, "I will make sure you never see a customer here again."

The darkness in Okita's eyes and tone were enough to make a black hole shrink up, and the next moment Okita was leading Kagura up the steps, to room 204.

"Since you offered your...services...for free, this seems appropriate," Kagura said, examining the décor as they walked in. "It looks like someone had way too much fun with lace..."

"Aw," Okita smirked, "you don't like pink lace, China?"

"No…" She trailed off, her eyes catching the mirror on the ceiling. Actually, there were far too many mirrors. Mirrors in lace covers on tables, in dumb places like the ceiling...

Okita sat down on the round bed, taking off his jacket and crossing his arms.

"Ok. Get on with it. Seduce me."

"Um...I'm thinking it might actually be better if I had borrowed Shinpachi's blowup doll and painted a guy's face on it."

"Come on, China, what are you, afraid?"

"NO!" Kagura turned a shade similar to her clothes. "I don't care what happens as long as you don't kiss me on the lips."

"Why, saving those for Danna?"

She turned even redder, and he decided he'd guessed right. This made that insane feeling escape his previous stranglehold on it and surge up, nearly overwhelming him.

She didn't move any closer to him, and shuffled from foot to foot.

"Wow, that's...something..." said Okita, trying not to laugh, "Not sexy, but something..."

Okita thought this was even more interesting than he imagined it would be. He loved torturing people, and Kagura gave him such splendid reactions to work with. This feeling almost defeated the other. Almost.

Something in Kagura snapped at his words, and she curled her lips, not unlike Okita did when there was something or someone to torture. She walked over to him and straddled his lap, curved her chest towards him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him close.

"How about this?" She breathed next to his ear. Okita, startled, first wondered at how light she was on him. Then she shifted on his lap, and he willed his body not to respond.

"It would be more convincing if you weren't shaking..." He breathed back, his hair tickling her cheeks, his lips that were mouthing the words just touching her ear. She, in turn, suppressed a shudder.

"And you realize you have to touch me, not grab on like you're about to headbutt me," Okita continued, head turned sideways, eyes anywhere but on her, both hands clutching the bedspread, his confidence that this was going to end well for him going down by the second.

Kagura's hands slowly relaxed, fell down his neck, to his shoulders, down his white shirt.

"Ok," Okita said, face still turned resolutely away from hers, "now unbutton my shirt. Slowly."

Kagura started, her hands hot as they brushed his skin, trying to imagine it was Gin-chan she was undressing. All her senses were filled with the feel of white cloth and buttons and...skin, and she couldn't think of anything else. The motions she was going through consumed her. When she ran out of buttons, she pulled his shirt out of his pants to get more, and his breath came out in a hitch.

Okita decided this couldn't go on any longer, he had to take control or he'd soon lose control. He moved and she was on her back, looking up at him leaning over her, his shirt mostly unbuttoned. Her eyes slipped down his chest, down, down...and felt lips at the bottom of her ear.

"This is what you need to do, China..." He whispered, lips tracing her jaw line.

"Are you roleplaying a girl to give me tips, dumbass?" She gasped, as kisses flitted down to the hollow of her neck.

"I'm showing you how to experiment…" Kagura breathed in quickly as his hands fell down her, his tongue finding the places on her neck her body against her will responded to. "…and to observe…what the person you're…_seducing_…likes," he said in between feather-light kisses.

Time slowed down then, as his lips inched past the hollow of her neck, as her eyes slid shut, as her mouth parted in a soft moan.

At the sound, Okita's head jerked up, and Kagura's eyes flew open to lock with his. He held her gaze a moment, then one corner of his mouth slid up in a smirk. Leaving his buttons undone, he took up his jacket and put it on as he walked to the door. When he reached it, he turned back to Kagura, prone on the bed with her mouth still half open.

"That's the end of today's practice," he said, delivering the finishing blow, "and tomorrow you're trying that on me."


	3. Chapter 3

Leaving the Yorozuya unnoticed had been fairly easy, after Kagura had spiked Shinpachi's drink. Shinpachi had acted like a worried mother the last few days, hemming and hawing at her listless appearance. Kagura would never in a million years tell him she was moping over her defeat at the hands of a stupid prick, or in a billion years that a small part of that dismay at her defeat was the fact that she was on some level attracted to the king of sadism.

If she were one for introspection, she would perhaps have realized that she was not far from being the queen of sadism herself. If she was wiser, she would have given up the practice as hopeless. But Kagura was none of those things.

And so she reached Ueno Koen, mind still churning, where Okita had demanded she meet him. It was the biggest park in the city—once not so long ago, before the Amanto came, scene for battles and the home of samurai, still lush and green around the stately manor house of Tokugawa Ieyasu.

"Looking for someone?" said a voice hidden in the grass.

Until Okita spoke, Kagura hadn't realized he was there. He laid there in the grass with his red eye patch still half over his eyes, looking to anyone who had bothered to glance at him like the single worst Shinsengumi officer in the entirety of Japan. Kagura fidgeted while he leisurely picked himself up from the grass, grabbing the folded blanket where he had reclined his head.

"Let's go, China," Okita said, tucking the blanket under his arm and striding off down the path, not waiting for Kagura after the last journey they took together had ended in her following him at stalking distance.

Kagura looked after him, slightly dazed at the fact that it was always harder to come up with a sufficiently sarcastic retort when he was around. Okita had taken the path deeper into the park, and so thoughts of where in the world he was taking her mixed with reasons why the lazy Okita bothered to bring a blanket with him. When she gave up trying to rationalize and explain his actions— a few seconds later—she hurried so as not to lose him in the winding paths of the park.

The bench Okita abruptly stopped at skirted a lake, clustered with trees and off the main path.

"We're not going to…that other place again?" Kagura asked, eying the bench with suspicion.

"No," answered Okita, "because after what happened last time, you're downgraded."

"Downgraded to a park bench?" Kagura looked about to punch him. Hard.

"Downgraded from beginner to novice," he explained. "I always knew you were stupid," he elaborated as he neatly side stepped Kagura's fist, "but I didn't think you'd still be so naïve, living with Danna."

At the mention of Gin-chan, Kagura tried to channel her all-consuming rage into something more practical: her triumphant defeat of the art of seduction. Victory, however, seemed further and further away since she last "practiced" with this annoying brat. And yet this battle would be different than the last, for Kagura had no intention of losing the war. All she needed were battle tactics, which she tried to study by volunteering to watch Otsu-chan's DVD specials with Shinpachi. Alas, what she learned from the DVDs was how to smile, how to pose for a camera, and how to creep Shinpachi out trying to copy the idol's every move.

"Hello? China?" Okita broke into Kagura's mental girding up her loins for Seduction Battle Round 2. He was sitting on the bench. "How about you take up your spot from last time on my lap and see what you can do?"

Kagura knew this was the first shot in the proverbial battle and had replayed their last meeting so many times she knew exactly what her first tactic would be. She closed the distance between them and instead of straddling him, placed her knees on either side of his legs, so that her chest was parallel with his face. Then she bent towards him, slowly, as he had said to do, clasping her arms around his neck, her breasts inches away from his gaze, slowly lowering her torso down. She felt him stiffen under her as she threaded her hands into the bottom of his hair, slowly putting the weight of her thighs on his, her cheek brushing his.

"That might have worked better if your boobs were bigger," Okita said sarcastically, hoping to cover the fact that he did not know exactly where to put his hands. He settled on almost behind him, grasping the bench for reassurance, or moral support. Or both. Thoughts of where she might be going with this tactic blossomed in his mind. He quickly banished them.

"Ah, so you like them big?" Kagura purred in his ear, still cheek to cheek, delighted with the seeming admission.

"Like you care. I'm not 'Gin-chan'," Okita imitated her high wistful tone at the name.

Kagura pulled back to study him, one side of her mouth curving in a sadistic grin not unlike Okita's. "Didn't you tell me to observe what the person you're seducing likes?"

Okita felt as if her earlier punch had miraculously just connected with his gut. Had she actually listened to what he had said at the time off-hand, trying with the first thing he could think of to divert her attention away from his body's reaction to her? Maybe he was giving her too much credit to notice his physical reaction, but it had been so sudden and unexpected that he had stopped thinking very clearly. Her moan had certainly not helped that situation either. Just the remembrance of it did not help. And now, her stark blue eyes, much bluer than the pond behind them, were not helping the situation again.

His expression must have betrayed a glimpse of his thoughts, because Kagura took her hands from around her neck and dropped them behind over his, still holding the bench for dear life. She held his gaze as she once again untucked his shirt, watched his eyes widen as she ran the fingers of both hands up the skin of his back under his shirt, focused on his lips parting slightly as her hands reached down to his pants, noticed a wisp of held breath exhale as she teased her hands down the back of his pants. All this she observed, and gloried in her observation. That would teach him to call her naïve.

She had observed right, then, in her interpretation of his behavior their last meeting, reviewed so many times in her mind. He _was_ physically attracted to her, despite the lying bravado of comments about preferring bigger boobs. Slowly, she ran her fingers around his waist to the front of his pants, noticing how warm his skin was under her touch. She unbuttoned them.

Then Okita's hands moved, so fast she almost did not see them. One grasped both of hers at his waist, the other clasped around the back of her neck. He pulled her head closer to his, their lips just a breath away, their eyes locked.

"You're not fighting fair," he murmured. "So why should I? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kiss you right now."

As an answer, though not the one Okita was trying not to want desperately to hear, the heavens opened and rain began to fall. Within a few seconds, both of them were on their way to being drenched, and yet they still had not moved closer or apart, or even dared to breathe. Kagura looked up at the weeping sky, then spoke, breaking the terrible silence between them.

"This rain crap only happens in TV dramas or books," she remarked, tasting the raindrops rolling down her cheeks as she spoke. "It's like we're characters in some stupid shoujo manga."

* * *

AN: If you can't make fun of yourself (and by extension your writing) as Kagura does, you're gonna have a hard time... :)


End file.
